Editorial: Few new ideas in poverty plan

The provincial government says its strategy on poverty reduction is now one step closer with an advisory group presenting its final recommendations on Monday, but given the far-ranging and decidedly expensive measures required to get the job done, the road ahead will prove steep and long.

The provincial government says its strategy on poverty reduction is now one step closer with an advisory group presenting its final recommendations on Monday, but given the far-ranging and decidedly expensive measures required to get the job done, the road ahead will prove steep and long.

The 11-member advisory group that was co-chaired by Alison Robertson, community development director of the Saskatoon Food Bank, and Constance Hourie, an assistant deputy minister at the Social Services Ministry, has set an ambitious goal of cutting by half Saskatchewan’s poverty rate by 2020.

However, on a day that saw stock markets tumble around the world and oil prices hit a 6½-year low, Social Services Minister Donna Harpauer could be forgiven if she gulped at some of the recommendations. These include a “pilot” basic income program for people receiving assistance, redesigning income supplements, extending health benefits to people who are not currently covered, and promoting the concept of a “living wage,” which in Saskatoon has been estimated at $16.77 an hour for someone working 35 hours a week.

The list goes on to cover the gamut from working with stakeholders to develop measures to end homelessness (including increasing the supply of houses on reserves), investing more in early childhood development, increasing the number of affordable child care spaces, concentrating on education and training, promoting greater inclusion of under-represented groups in the workforce, and targeting health promotion and disease prevention to reduce illnesses linked to poverty.

If it seems as if you’ve heard many of these recommendations and strategies before, that’s because you have. As the committee points out, it wants to build on other major initiatives such as the disability strategy, the mental health and addictions plan, and the joint task force on improving education and employment outcomes for First Nations and Metis people.

The problem is that combining them all into one plan isn’t likely to get things moving any faster, and certainly not in time to cut the province’s poverty rate in half within five years.

While Saskatchewan is making progress, and its proportion of people living in poverty in 2012, at 10.6 per cent, was considerably better than the national average of 12 per cent, a key factor remains the cooperation needed from the federal government to tackle challenges that confront First Nations citizens who are disproportionately impoverished.

Whether it’s investing in more early childhood development services, education, social supports or housing on reserves, the province won’t get very far without changes in federal policy.

While a provincial poverty reduction strategy is needed and welcome, the challenge is to understand how the recommendations from this group will go any further than previous ones made by various others, most related in one way or another to the same issue.

As Minister Harpauer noted, budget cycles dictate what she can do, and the government is currently in the middle of one dominated by forest fires and low oil prices. The mismatch between the recommendations and what the province can afford seems too great to expect any quick results.

The editorials that appear in this space represent the opinion of The StarPhoenix. They are unsigned because they do not necessarily represent the personal views of the writers. The positions taken in the editorials are arrived at through discussion among the members of the newspaper’s editorial board, which operates independently from the news departments of the paper.

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